I FINISHED COLLEGE APP SUBMISSIONS. This was new territory for me. Both my older siblings only applied to one school and had no trouble getting in. I applied to four, all in-state, one public and three private. I'm hoping to study english and business, and both my older siblings are in engineering. There's been a weighing fear that if I do indeed study english, it won't be a useful degree, but I've prayed and prayed and I know it's what I'm supposed to do. All I have to do is wait and see what happens next.

I SPENT A WEEKEND AT THE BEACH. Boy, Kiawah is a dream. If you've never been, think private Island with spanish moss, cute houses, good food, great people; basically an Island dream. The weekend was spent with good friends, a week after a hurricane passed through (so it was pretty quiet while we were there). It was just what I needed as I was stuck in the business of first quarter. The weekend was filled with bike rides, sea shell hunts, jamming to T-Swizzle's entire Red, and havana-oo-na-nah.

I'VE WATCHED LOTS AND LOTS OF FOOTBALL. I'm not the biggest fan of the sport myself, but it's been on in my house for every hour of every weekend. It brings people together like nothing else can.

I'M AN EDITOR OF MY SCHOOL'S LIT MAG. Senior year comes with more responsibility. As an editor, I head up the reading and voting on of submissions, bake, and next semester I'll help assemble the magazine itself. It's fun, and I'm hoping it'll look good on college apps :)

I'VE ATTEMPTED NANO. I only have about 10k written on my current WIP, and I'm not beating myself up about it, because that's more than I thought I would get. Trying to juggle what I have to do and what I want to do is hard work. I can't let school take the back-burner, so I don't feel bad about only getting 10k words on my WIP. Let's face it; the only time I'll be able to participate in NaNo full-time is after I graduate college.

I SPENT A WEEKEND WITH MY GRANDPARENTS. My grandparents have some acreage out in the country a couple hours from my home, so a few weekends ago I drove down and spent a day and night with them. It was slow-living at its finest: grilling out on the deck, crossword puzzles and Stephen King over morning coffee, long walks in the woods. Sometimes, a little rest is all you need.

I SPENT A WEEKEND IN TENNESSEE. TN has had my heart since my family visited two Novembers ago, so I was stoked to go back this November. It was good food, worship music, and real conversations; an experience of raw humanity.

Good things

waking up to the glow of morning sunlight

warm sweaters, leggings, fuzzy socks, scrunchies

roar of the ocean water as if crashes over you, cleansing salt and sand on skin

laughter over nonsense, contagious and bubbly and pure

the smell of mountain air

standing around a campfire, singing to the King; we were strangers before but now we’re bound together eternally

golden hour sunlight

long hugs with good friends

no, really, how are you?the gentle push from friends to do better, be better; they tell you because they care

We never had much except
mornings around the blue wooden kitchen table with meat from the neighbor’s
pigs and grits from our make-shift mill. Grandma held a pen cap between her
teeth, brows furrowed at the Sunday crossword. Grandpa was looking down at his
latest Stephen King through thin wire glasses while he dabbed the corners of
his mouth with a red and white checkered napkin. Eleven letter word for
prominent, Grandma mused, and Grandpa said, Illustrious.
He chuckled as Grandma hit him over the head with the rolled-up newspaper and
said, I was asking Lila Jane, Hank.

They wanted to send me to the boarding school across the state
border, the one where Momma went to be a writer. On the shelf above the kitchen
sink sat a jar, LJ’s school fund scrawled across the front in
permanent ink. Grandpa would come home from the bank every Friday at drop a
twenty in. Every month when I watched Grandpa sigh and lay his head in his
hands while he paid the bills I would climb onto the countertop by the sink to
get the jar and bring it to Grandpa; at first he would push it away with his
tired fading hands, but then he would look up from the check book and his blue
sparkling eyes would meet my hazel ones as he would reach out to cup my cheek
with his palm and whisper maybe someday.

But someday came and Grandpa collapsed on the linoleum and never
woke up. I can't forget Grandma's murmurs of oh Hank oh Hank oh Hank my
Hank when we lowered him into the ground the next week, how they
folded up the American flag and laid it in my shaking hands because Grandma was
too weak from the tears to grasp anything in her fingers.

The next morning Grandma and I sat at the blue wooden kitchen
table and I skimmed Grandpa's copy of Children of the Corn. Grandma
said, six-letter word for Russian peasant, originated in the Sixteenth
Century and I breathed muzhik; she smiled when she tapped
me on the head with the rolled-up newspaper.

The jar on the shelf above the kitchen sink was long-empty so we
replaced it with a picture of Grandpa in his uniform from the war and I rode
the school bus to the local high school so we could save gas. Grandma tried to
make coffee in the mornings but one day she sputtered over the words this
coffee tastes like dirt, can you make it for me, Hank? So Grandma
moved to the old folks home a couple towns over and I quit school and worked
four jobs and made barely enough to cover Grandma's rent.

The chairs of the blue wooden kitchen table creaked as I sat to
dial the wretched numbers of the wretched man in the city apartment two states
over. I’m in trouble, I said, and he
recognized my voice. His words were slurred when he asked you’re not pregnant, are you. I said no,I’m not pregnant, but Grandpa’s dead and Grandma’s lost her
memory and I can’t pay the rent. I got a check two weeks later, a big check
made out to Lila Davis. I scoffed when I opened it because I didn’t know that
girl, I was Lila Jane. But I signed the check and put it in the bank and went
back to school and worked two jobs instead of four. And things got better.

Momma had always told me
hard work pays off in laughter so I
grew to relish the achy feeling at the end of the day when my muscles felt like
jello and little pieces of my hair were stuck to my forehead with sweat. I’d
sit down to eat dinner at the cafe where I worked and smile as I ate because
this was a place of unity and equality. In these walls no man had power over
another. The beggar laughed with the Ivy League school girl over a song on the
radio that had too many words and didn’t rhyme, and they took their coffee the
same, black with two sugars.

I was taking classes at the University a couple towns over, in the
same town as Grandma’s old folks home, and I’d sit and do Business Calculus at
the blue wooden kitchen table after I got home. And one day a knock on the door
yielded the view of a red-haired boy and some friends from the University. We need a place to stay and we heard you
have extra rooms, we’ll pay rent, they said. So they sat at the blue wooden
kitchen table while I changed the sheets in Grandma’s bedroom and the guest
room. I told them about Grandma and every Sunday we’d take the crossword to
her. Sometimes she thought the red-haired boy was Grandpa but it was okay because
their laughs were the same, like honey on a buttered biscuit cooked golden
brown.

A few semesters later by the exchange of golden bands the
red-haired boy’s sheets became mine. We were having coffee at the blue wooden
kitchen table and I was wearing his old Ghostbusters tee shirt when we got the
phone call. Two weeks later Grandma was in hospice, but she had always said don’t hook me up to those machines, Lila
Jane, let me go when I’m ready. So we let Grandma fall asleep and never
wake up, and when we lowered her into the ground the next day it was just me
and the red-haired boy there to say goodbye. He brought Sunday’s crossword and
laid it on her grave, and I could hear from heaven the way Grandma rolled her
tongue at the word fervent.

Two years passed and my belly was growing with the life of another
human and the wretched man from two states over knocked on the door. Except now
he was broke and cold, lost all his money from gambling on the Las Vegas Strip.
I need a place to stay. I thought
about how he didn’t come to walk me down the aisle of wildflowers when I wedded
the red-haired boy, how his wedding gift was herbal tea, the only kind I didn’t
like. But the red-haired boy smiled and shook my father’s hand and he stayed
with us for a long while, in exchange for the money he lent to help us get by
all those years ago.

He was sitting at the blue wooden kitchen table when he said it: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. So we
helped him back on his feet. He worked four jobs and rented the guest house
out back, came home every night with muscles like jello and hair stuck to his
forehead with sweat. And every Sunday we’d eat meat from our own pigs and grits
from the mill. Little red-haired Hank ate from the spoon his Grandpa held out
for him, and I whispered words to my red-haired boy as he filled out the Sunday
crossword. We never had much more than that, but it was enough.